Spy on the Forth

A junior lieutenant in the German Naval Reserve, Carl Hans Lody was recruited to spy on Britain and Ireland at the start of the First World War.

The Firth of Forth, the large estuary to the north of Edinburgh, was of great strategic importance. As well as being the main seaward approach to the Scottish capital and the site of the Forth Bridge, it was used as an anchorage by dozens of Royal Navy ships. The area was heavily fortified with gun batteries and minefields to protect it against attacks from the sea. The Germans wanted to obtain information on the British fleet and defences, as well as the aftermath of any engagements. However, Lody had little training for espionage. His only means of communication with his superiors in Germany was by telegrams and letters to neutral countries. He sent a number of telegrams using a simple code, but other highly incriminating messages were sent in plain text without any coding. He did not know that MI5 was monitoring letters and telegrams abroad, or that his messages would be intercepted.

Lody travelled to Dublin in Ireland on 29 September, travelling via the busy port of Liverpool. He took the opportunity to write a detailed letter in German describing ships in the harbour and conversations that he had overheard. Unlike some of his earlier letters, it contained information of real military value to the Germans, but was written without any coding. Postal censors intercepted the letter and MI5 decided to order his arrest.

Having been transported back to London, Lody was put on trial for “war treason”, which was punishable by the death penalty. Lody admitted in court that he had been a spy. He refused to name Fritz Prieger, the person who had recruited him: “that name I cannot say as I have given my word of honour”. He was convicted and taken to the Tower of London to be executed on the morning of 6 November 1914.

Artist’s Response

Within a square of Asian ply, linear motifs have been carved across the surface. It is an improvised arrangement of lines to represent connections and communication, and is loosely framed to enclose four wood engravings. These depict more representational subjects: a telegraph machine, Union Jack with battleship, envelopes and eight rifles. The method of wood engraving employs the end-grain of a hard wood, in this case Lemonwood. Woodcut uses the side-grain of a softer timber in which knife and chisel create more painterly marks and tonality. This print was made in five stages, by hand-burnishing onto a single sheet of Arakaji paper.

Jonathan Gibbs
Programme Director, Illustration
School Of Design
Edinburgh College Of Art
Edinburgh University (Specialist In Wood Engraving)
www.jonathangibbs.com

Jonathan Peter Gibbs studied at Lowestoft School of Art, the Central School of Art & Design, London and the Slade School of Fine Art, UCL.

He is a lecturer in the University of Edinburgh. Gibbs’ work encapsulates book illustration, drawing & painting, printmaking, editorial & pattern design. He exhibits regularly in London and Edinburgh. Gibbs’s work has been published in a variety of books, magazines, and printed artefacts as well as in digital formats and web design. He makes some of his own boxwood and holly blocks, into which images are engraved and printed onto Japanese paper by hand-burnishing with a bone spoon.